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Younger Black Americans face particularly high risks of developing high blood pressure. However, new research finds that when your peers are coaching you to get healthy, it’s more likely you’ll see your numbers improve. The study of nearly 1,600 Black patients living in the southeastern United States found that having a peer coach help manage blood pressure worked even better than standard, doctor-centered care. A lot of the improvement was due to folks simply remembering to take their blood pressure meds. “We were not surprised to see this greater benefit in younger patients,” said first author and study lead Dr. Monika Safford. “We know this is a population that has more room for improvement, because they are less likely to take their medications regularly.” Safford is chief of general internal medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, in New York City. The study group consisted of Black Americans averaging 58 years of age, treated at rural health centers in Alabama and North Carolina. All had uncontrolled high blood pressure at the start of the study, which ran from 2016 through 2021. Folks either received “usual care” for their hypertension (patients were educated about blood pressure and given a monitor to use at home), or they got usual care enhanced with peer coaches — non-clinicians who were trained to give participants information, support… read on > read on >

For the first time, the United States has fallen out of the top 20 spots on the annual world’s happiest nations list. Americans are now No. 23, far behind the top five countries — Finland (No. 1), Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Israel. “The United States of America (23rd) has fallen out of the top 20 for the first time since the World Happiness Report (WHP) was first published in 2012, driven by a large drop in the wellbeing of Americans under 30,” the World Happiness Report said in a news release. The U.S. placed 15th in last year’s rankings. This decline may not come as a surprise to many Americans, with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy citing rising levels of anxiety and mental health issues among the young as a “devastating” crisis as far back as 2021. The new global happiness tally was issued to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness. It’s based on citizens’ responses from more than 140 nations and is “powered by data from the Gallup World Poll and analysed by some of the world’s leading wellbeing scientists,” the WHP explained. Rounding out the top 10 countries on the list, beginning with No. 6, are The Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia. Canada placed 15th and the United Kingdom, No. 20. At the bottom of the 143-nation list: Afghanistan. … read on > read on >

About 1 in every 10 U.S. children ages 5 to 17 has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to the latest government statistics. The data from the National Health Interview Survey covers the years 2020 through 2022 and came from in-person or phone interviews involving a representative sample of American homes. It found that 11.3% of school-age children have been diagnosed with ADHD, with boys more likely to have this diagnosis (14.5%) than girls (8%), according to report authors Cynthia Reuben and Nazik Elgaddal, of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). ADHD is diagnosed more often among white children (13.4%) than Black youngsters (10.8%) or Hispanic (8.9%) kids, the survey also showed. Family income seemed to matter, too: As income levels rose, the rate of child ADHD diagnoses declined. Access to medical care also seemed to influence whether or not a child was diagnosed with ADHD. For example, while 14.4% percent of school-age kids on public health insurance (such as Medicaid) had an ADHD diagnosis, that fell to 9.7% of children covered by private insurance, and 6.3% of kids from uninsured families, the report found. The findings were published March 20 as an NCHS Data Brief. The NCHS is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More information Find out more about diagnosing ADHD at the Cleveland Clinic.… read on > read on >

Exercise can help women better cope with the rigors of advanced breast cancer, a new study says. Patients had less pain and fatigue, as well as an improved quality of life, after taking part in a regular exercise program, researchers reported today at the European Breast Cancer Conference in Milan, Italy. The findings show that patients with breast cancer that’s spread should be offered exercise as part of their treatment regimen, said researcher Anouk Hiensch, an assistant professor of epidemiology and health economics at University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands. “Patients with metastatic cancer often undergo continuous treatment that aims to prolong their life,” Hiensch said in a news release. “Thanks to these treatments, many patients with metastatic cancer live longer, but many also report a deteriorating quality of life over time,” he added. “We therefore need supportive care strategies, like exercise, that make the lives of these patients better.” For this study, 357 patients with advanced breast cancer were recruited at one of eight cancer centers in Germany, Poland, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and Australia. Their average age was 55. Half were randomly assigned a nine-month exercise program alongside cancer therapy, while the other half got usual cancer care. The exercise group worked out twice a week, with a personalized training regimen that included resistance, aerobic and balance exercises. Patients in both groups… read on > read on >

Planting trees and bushes near busy highways helps clear the air of harmful air pollutants from motor vehicles, new research affirms. “They provide benefits that go beyond aesthetics,” Roby Greenwald, an associate professor of public health at Georgia State University in Atlanta, said in a university news release. “But,” he added, “I don’t want to give anyone the impression that we can solve all of the problems associated with motor vehicle emissions simply by planting trees.” Greenwald is the lead author of a new study that sampled air quality along five Atlanta-area highways and interstates. The findings were recently published in the journal PLoS One. When air at sites with natural or ornamental vegetation was compared with that from similar sites without vegetation, the results were clear: Soot levels were 37% lower and ultrafine particles, 7% lower. Vegetation doesn’t, however, reduce hazardous carbon dioxide emissions or ozone pollution, Greenwald emphasized. “Trees and bushes near roadways don’t solve the problem of air pollution caused by motor vehicles, but they can help reduce the severity of the problem,” he said in the news release. Motor vehicle exhaust has been linked to asthma, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart attacks, and remedies are urgently needed, researchers said. In the U.S., 45 million people live, work or go to school within 300 feet of a major highway, they pointed… read on > read on >

— Boys who drink lots of sugary soda and fruit juice could be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes later in life, a new study has found. Each daily 8-ounce serving of sugary drinks during a boy’s childhood is associated with a 34% increase in insulin resistance by the time they are teens, researchers found. Sugary drinks and fruit juices also were associated with increases in blood sugar levels, results show. “While these findings are preliminary, they support the existing evidence about the potential relationship between beverages with added sugar and long-term risk of Type 2 diabetes in children,” lead researcher Soren Harnois-Leblanc, a registered dietitian and postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release. For the study, researchers tracked the health of almost 500 Massachusetts children taking part in an ongoing long-term study of women and their children. As part of the study, dietary records were kept on the childen. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. kids and teens consume at least one sugary drink – soda, lemonade, energy drinks and the like – every day, according to the American Heart Association. Eating too many foods with added sugars raises a person’s risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and tooth decay, researchers said. For the new study, researchers estimated how much sugary drinks and fruit juices kids… read on > read on >

People who are double-jointed might be at increased risk of developing long COVID, a new study reports. Double-jointed folks are 30% more likely to not fully recover from COVID-19 infection, compared with those who are less flexible, researchers report in the journal BMJ Public Health. They also are more likely to experience the persistent fatigue associated with long COVID, results show. These findings demonstrate how COVID attacks different parts of the body, taking advantage of whatever it finds, researchers said. Long COVID is more likely in people with health problems also shared among the double-jointed, researchers noted – fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine, allergies, anxiety, depression and back pain. The presence of what the researchers called “joint laxity” gives “an important clue to differences in connective tissue composition that can affect multiple bodily systems,” explained the research team. It was led by Dr. Jessica Eccles, a clinical neuroscientist with Brighton and Sussex Medical School in Brighton, U.K. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 3,000 participants in a COVID symptom study. About 1 in 3 people said they had not fully recovered from their last bout with COVID, and among them nearly 30% were double-jointed. After accounting for other risks, double-jointedness was strongly associated with a failure to fully recover from COVID infection and higher levels of fatigue. Long COVID is probably a… read on > read on >

Intermittent fasting might be bad for your heart, a new study warns. People who restricted their eating to an 8-hour window had nearly twice the risk of heart-related death compared to folks who ate freely, results show. This runs counter to previous research in which intermittent fasting improved several measures related to heart health, including blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels, the researchers noted. “We were surprised to find that people who followed an 8-hour, time-restricted eating schedule were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease,” said senior researcher Victor Wenze Zhong, chair of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in Shanghai. “Even though this type of diet has been popular due to its potential short-term benefits, our research clearly shows that, compared with a typical eating time range of 12-16 hours per day, a shorter eating duration was not associated with living longer,” Zhong added in an American Heart Association (AHA) news release. For the study, Zhong and his colleagues analyzed data on more than 20,000 U.S. adults who participated in an annual federal survey on health and nutrition between 2003 and 2018. The survey tracked participants’ pattern of eating. Many people who adhere to time-restricted fasting tend to eat all their food in an 8-hour window, and then fast for the rest of the day, researchers… read on > read on >

“Havana Syndrome” appears to cause real and severe symptoms among federal employees suffering from the mystery illness, but there’s no evidence of brain injury or biological abnormalities among them, a new report shows. Researchers evaluated 81 U.S. diplomats and other federal employees, mostly stationed abroad, who had complained of hearing noise and feeling head pressure just before experiencing headache, dizziness, trouble thinking and other symptoms. These symptoms have been described as “Havana Syndrome” because U.S. government personnel stationed in Havana, Cuba, first reported such cases in 2016. Since then, hundreds of American personnel in stations in many different countries have reported similar symptoms. After nearly five years of research, investigators from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that MRI brain scans of Havana Syndrome patients did not appear significantly different than those taken of healthy patients in a control group. A battery of other medical tests also found no differences between Havana Syndrome patients and healthy controls that would explain their symptoms. These included blood panels, hearing tests, balance tests, vision screening and psychological evaluation. However, researchers hastened to add that these symptoms are genuine, even if a cause isn’t apparent. “While we did not identify significant differences in participants with [Havana Syndrome], it’s important to acknowledge that these symptoms are very real, cause significant disruption in the lives of those affected and can… read on > read on >

People with dementia — and their caregivers — need active social lives to stay healthy, a new study reports. However, researchers found that both dementia patients and their caregivers had declining social connections as the disease progressed. Patients’ social networks faltered, as failing memory made conversation difficult, causing family and friends to become uncomfortable in their presence, researchers said. And their caregivers — spouses, adult children and others — became isolated as their responsibilities to the patient mounted. None of that was healthy for patients or caregivers. “Unmet social needs negatively impact quality of life, and that can lead to health outcomes like depression and cardiovascular disease, as well as high health-care use and early death,” explained lead researcher Dr. Ashwin Kotwal, an assistant professor of medicine in the University of California, San Francisco’s Division of Geriatrics. “We know from previous research that older adults with higher levels of social isolation have more than double the odds of nursing home placement,” Kotwal added in a university news release. For the study, researchers analyzed the cases of two dozen mainly male patients with dementia and four dozen mainly female caregivers. The average age of patients was 80, and the average age of caregivers was 67. Results indicate that both patients and caregivers should be regularly screened for loneliness and isolation, so doctors can find ways to… read on > read on >

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‘Peer Coaches’ Help Younger Black Americans Keep Hypertension at Bay

U.S. Falls Out of Top 20 in ‘World’s Happiest Countries’ List

One in 10 U.S. School-Age Kids Have ADHD: Report

Exercise Helps Women Cope With Advanced Breast Cancers

Roadside Trees, Bushes Are Cutting Air Pollution, Study Finds

Sodas, Fruit Juices Raise Boys’ Odds for Type 2 Diabetes

Could Double-Jointed Folk Face Higher COVID Risks?

Could Intermittent Fasting Diets Raise Heart Risks?

No Brain Injuries Seen Among ‘Havana Syndrome’ Patients

Staying Social Vital for People With Alzheimer’s, Caregivers